


the finish line

by sevenfoxes



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M, No Incest, Partner sharing, but let's just say that the winklevoss brothers do not have a healthy relationship with each other, the threesome is more... in theory than in physical practice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9660818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes
Summary: Cameron his drinks coffee black and Tyler with two creams and two sugars.  Sometimes Tyler will slick his hair back or tug on a bandana, smile with a leer in public that lets Erica know exactly what he's thinking about, entirely transparent.  Cameron never wears hats or bandanas, a creature of immense habit, his hair always perfectly coiffed, and wears the face of seasoned poker player.  But when Cameron gets her alone, he smiles exactly like his brother, and Tyler drinks his coffee black when he thinks no one is watching.They play their parts with a precision that comes across as genuine to everyone but her.  Cameron as the effortless gentleman, never a toe or tongue out of line, and Tyler as the hotheaded brother, whose only saving grace is the methodical calculation of his brother, who has the ability to handle his brother in a way that baffles Erica.  But they're a two-headed coin, the illusion of difference only an assumption when you accept the reality with which you are presented, when you can't see the duplication hidden by the skin of a palm.--There is no second place.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



> michelle: I CAN'T FORGIVE YOU FOR DELETING THAT SOCIAL NETWORK FIC I THINK ABOUT IT SOMETIMES  
> me: I didn't really delete it. It's just locked in my el jay.  
> me: HOLY FUCK I WROTE THIS SHIT SIX. YEARS. AGO. Sometimes I forget a) how old I am and b) how long we've known each other. I'll post it back up if you want.  
> michelle: do it.
> 
> Seriously. This shit is from 2011, back when I was writing under another name. SIX YEARS, JFC. I was like, WHY DID I WRITE THIS FIC AGAIN?
> 
> Oh yeah.

 

 

 

 

 

Erica doesn't know which one of them she meets first, only that he looks at her with something akin to understanding as he shakes her hand lightly, her ears only tuning into his voice to hear the start of his last name.  His eyes do drift though, down across the bare skin of her chest, the small cleavage provided by the Victoria's Secret bra (and of course Mark knew, even though she had only slept with him once, in the dark of his dorm room while they were both a little drunk) under the low-cut shirt her roommate had lent her because it's the end of the week and everything that isn't a BU t-shirt has already been tossed in her hamper.

She knows Mark's in California, that he didn't come back to school, and she wishes people would stop telling her things like this about him as if she really wants to know what he's doing.  As much as she wants to believe she's moved past the overwhelming anger that she had been filled with for weeks afterwards, she knows that some of it still lingers inside of her, its half-life dragging on endlessly, that part of the reason she had accepted Lindsay's invitation to the Porcellian's ridiculous party was because she wanted to put her feet inside the door, get into the place he had been obsessed with for as long as she had known him.   She only wishes Mark could see her here, granted entry into a place he coveted above all else for some reason that remains inexplicable to her, even now.  And it's that thought that makes her truly unhappy, the bitterness she can't let go of, the fact that he has turned her into the worst version of herself.  This is not who she is.

Winklevoss (she'll default to this trick later, pulling out their last name when she can't remember if it's Tyler's hand at the small of her back or Cameron passing her the glass of wine) finally looks back up at her face, and she lifts her eyebrows, bringing the bottle of beer gone warm to her lips.  The smile he cracks is instantly recognizable from a photo she saw in _The Crimson_ , two identical faces looming over an article about some ridiculous website they are fighting with Mark about.

She doesn't know which one this is, but she remembers the first thing he says.

"Mark Zuckerberg is a little fucking prick."

 

 

 

 

 

(Later, she'll see them talking, the two of them, one of them still in a jacket and tie while the other has stripped down to a crisp white shirt.  She still won't know which is which.  She'll be half-drunk and tired, and have a sneaking suspicion that most people here know exactly who she is.  And even though she'll think she might be more popular because of it, Mark generally loathed by the Harvard student elite, she wants to be anonymous.

One will touch the other on the shoulder and lean into him, whispering something in his ear like a secret.

And they'll both look at her at the same time, eyes meeting hers across the room.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The one Erica makes out with in the bathroom, the party still loud and obnoxious outside, is Tyler.  He's so much bigger than she is, something she doesn't entirely realize until they're up against the wall, her shoulder so close to the small towel rack beside them that every time she tries to lift her arm higher to touch him, it presses angrily into her skin until it hurts.  He's bigger: taller, wider, heavier.  But there's something else there too, an energy to him, and her roommate would laugh and say, _You're such a fucking hippy, Albright_ , but it doesn't make it any less true.

Tyler tips her head back to get at the skin on her throat right under her jaw, and she can feel the start of the hickey there, the blood vessels beneath her skin breaking under his mouth.  Teeth nip at it after, as if to double-check, to ensure that he's ruined the skin there, and she knows there's no way she's going to be able to hide it properly.  That was the point, she thinks.  She's known boys like Tyler before; she knows what makes him tick.

When Erica cards her fingers through his hair (soft, but a little stiff from some product that at least doesn't feel greasy on her fingers), he starts making his way down her skin, lips and teeth and tongue dragging sloppily along her neck and shoulders.  He almost has to bend over in half to mouth at her chest, pulling on the flexible neck of her shirt, the strap on her right shoulder sliding right off.  A tongue swipes over her nipple when he peels back her shirt and bra far enough.

"Jesus," Erica whines, and his response is a deep, rumbly laugh as he circles his arms under her ass to lift her up, using the wall to eventually replace one his hands holding her up, his fingers moving lightning quick under the hem of her loose skirt, testing her over the thin layer of her cotton panties.

She doesn't say his name as he pushes his fingers inside of her, but he says hers, growls it into the sweep of hair behind her ear.  She can't remember telling it to him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He's waiting for her outside her _Development of American Constitutional Law_ course, leaning against the trees lined along Bay Street in front of the rather dull looking building she takes most of her classes in.  He doesn't blend in with the other students milling around the building, too tall and too golden.  Harvard students are easy to spot, especially the ones that look like Tyler.

"Tyler?" she asks curiously as Rachael tells her that she's late for a meeting with Professor Fleming and takes off, leaving her standing alone in front of him.  She wasn't expecting to hear from Tyler again; he had asked for her number after, his fingers still a little damp from her as he took the slip of paper and shoved it in the pocket of his jeans, but she wasn't expecting a call, and she definitely wasn't expecting to see him again.  He didn't seem like the type to linger on a girl he got off in a bathroom and frankly, she's not the type to linger on a casual hookup either.  Erica is more than happy to chalk up the incident in the Porcellian's ridiculous bathroom as the folly of youth, too much beer and not enough common sense.

He smiles and she instantly knows the difference, odd considering the smiles are identical, the same broad expanse of white teeth and pink lips curved up.  "No," he says, his voice low and rough like gravel, "Cameron."

(It is at this point that she realizes that it was Cameron she met first, who shook her hand and acknowledged their mutual loathing of Zuckerberg, who got her a drink after she finished her bottle of beer and listened to her talk about one of the plays she had caught at the Opera House, some modern retelling of a Danish folklore with Machiavellian themes.  Cameron who she's sure told Tyler her name.)

By the time they reach the small cafe she suggests, her next class ( _Psychology of Personality: Theory and Application_ with Dr. Carville, who spends the majority of his time talking about his own research) is almost half over anyway, so she decides to call it a loss and scam the notes off one of the girls in her house taking the class too.  Cameron pays for her coffee without asking, peeling a twenty off a stack of bills held together by a money clip that looks like it might have cost about as much as her first car.  Erica has never found that sort of extravagance particularly endearing, but she smiles when he hands her the cup anyway, watching him grab his own and a carrot muffin before motioning to the empty table in the corner by the windows.

When she slides off her jacket, she suddenly feels a nagging sense of nervousness over her appearance.  She overslept this morning, hitting her snooze button one too many times, so her still-damp hair is swept up into a messy bun high on her head, and she consistently has a shortage of clothes, which means that the top she grabbed in her haste is the same one she wore bowling last weekend that has a ketchup stain on the inside of the elbow where Ephraim had nailed her with a french fry.  The less said about her jeans the better; they're a couple years old, faded and a little small, with a small rip on her left thigh above the knee.

Bad indie music hums through the stereo in the small cafe as Cameron scratches at his temple.  There's tape around a few of his fingers, white medical tape between the first and second knuckle.

"What?" he asks, and he almost sounds self-conscious. Almost.

"Is there any reason your hands are covered in tape?"

"Oh," he says with an easy laugh, starting to peel the tape off his fingers while she watches, rapt.  His hands are _huge_ , fingers long and graceful, and she feels her face warming at the thought of the same set, only not, inside of her.  "Sorry, I just came from practice."  He continues when she gives him a curious look.  "I row crew.  The tape helps prevent blisters.  Gives a bit of grip depending on the type of oar you use, too."

"You row crew?"

The pride is written all over his face, innocent and open, like a little boy whose work has just been complimented.  It would be sweet if she didn't suspect a sizable ego came attached right along with it.  "Yeah, my brother and I."

She takes a sip of her coffee, hot and perfect, and leans back against her chair, waving Cameron off when he offers her some of the carrot muffin he's currently dissecting.  Half of it is gone before she can blink, Cameron brushing the crumbs off the table and his lap.

"Listen, I don't mean to be rude," she says, curling her hands protectively around the cup in front of her, "but what exactly are we doing here?"  She can't bring herself to mention what she did with Tyler that night, even though she's pretty sure Tyler has already told him.  They seem like the type to share stories, conquests and the like.

Amusement brightens Cameron's features, eyebrows raised at her like she's challenging him.

"Maybe I just like you," he says.

She swears she hears _we_ instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Your mother called," Rosemary says when Erica walks into their suite, throwing her purse down by her desk in the common room and crawling onto her bed in the small room to the side, facedown in her pillow.  Erica knows her mouth must be swollen, the flushed looked she always gets when she kisses someone, and she doesn't want the third degree from Rosemary, who has never met a question she isn't willing to ask, no matter how intrusive.  "She said she tried your cell, but it went straight to voicemail."

Cameron had walked her back to her building, his hands tucked in the pockets of his light jacket while he talked about something she honestly can't remember. Erica doesn't think she was really listening to a word he said, her attention laid entirely on the curve of his neck and slight limp to his walk, like he was sore and trying to favour a leg.  The only time she had listened to him was when he closed the distance between them, her back pressed into the red, crusted brick.  And even then it had only been, "Erica," as he curled his hands around her hips, head ducking down and toward her.

They had made out there, against the side of her building in the middle of the goddamn afternoon, the only shelter from the walkway a line of tall trees and dying, half-bare bushes.  He had touched the shadow of the hickey his brother had left, pressed a thumb into the faded patch of skin as he kissed her mouth raw, and she felt herself clench around nothing, just heat and slick building inside of her.  She doesn't even know what to make of that, the thick, waterlogged feeling between her thighs that makes her wish she had asked him up to her room even though her roommate's here, studying for a test, and they haven't cleaned or done laundry in two weeks, so the place looks like a disaster.  Erica's always been the type of girl to walk into a relationship with both eyes open, but she feels like she's crawling around blind, doing things she knows are stupid.  She is not that girl, the endless stream of girls she's met at university, girls who flirts stupidly, gets drunk at parties, pine after promiscuous boys and cry endlessly when they don't call.

"Albright?" Rosemary asks, looking up from the thick textbook on her desk, a highlighter clutched between her fingers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyler calls her two days later.  When she doesn't pick up the first three times, he calls a fourth.

( _I'll pick you up at eight_ , he says, not even a question.  In the back of her mind she knows she can say no, that if she was stern enough, if she levelled her voice and told him that she doesn't care for whatever bullshit he and his brother are playing at, he would back off.  She doesn't.

_Your brother-_ she starts, not quite sure what she wants to say.  It doesn't matter in the end, Tyler's voice cutting her off casually.

_You like Greek, right?_

She does.  He picks her up a little late in one of the most ostentatious cars she's ever seen.  When she tells him as much, her hands resting on her knees like she's a good Catholic school girl in mass, he laughs and hits the gas when the light in front of them turns green.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boat they're in slices delicately through the calm water.  It's early enough that the sun only warms the sky slightly, and Erica fights off the urge to fall asleep as she leans against the low railing of the bridge, the only noise this time of the morning the thick sound of oars dipping into the Charles River.  She's stopped by on the way to the library, cutting across the Charles to get coffee at her favourite vegan co-op, but she's a good mile out of her way and the periodical library doesn't open for another hour.

Tyler and Cameron have cut a sizable lead ahead of the other boats, and it seems effortless, their strokes even and unrushed, like a tease to those who follow.  Their oars make an hollow, dark noise when they pass under the bridge, and Erica swears she can hear one of them talking, low and angry, but the sound disappears into the crisp air when they pass underneath her and back out into the open water.

They don't look up.  She isn't sure which is in the front and which is in the back, only that they move with a synchronization that seems unnatural, like their bodies are only an echo of one another, passed back and forth endlessly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She sleeps with Cameron first.

(First.  This is when Erica knows just how deep she has dug herself in.  Cameron's considerable weight on top of her, his hips rutting against hers, and she is thinking about his brother then, just for a flickering moment, how she is sure she'll know Tyler's weight on top of her too, the thick press of him inside her.)

Cameron shows up at her door late, trails in behind someone else from her house because he doesn't dial her number from the phone box outside and there's no other way inside.  He just knocks on her door and smiles when she opens it, leaning against the frame in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a thin white shirt.  He follows her in, too, wordlessly as his heel connects with the door to push it shut.

There's a conversation between the door and the bed, a few stray minutes of chatter, a conversation where she asks questions and he dodges them, gives her the edges of what might be truth, but what she's pretty sure might be lies.  Because between them, Cameron lies and Tyler tells the truth, even when they're saying the exact same thing.  Cameron lies to protect, buffers the truth that Tyler gives freely because his brother's caution gives him liberty to.

Then Cameron's hands are slipping under the edge of her sweater, pulled off before he unbuttons and peels off the layers beneath.  He's been drinking; she can taste the bitter aftertaste of beer on his tongue, but he's not drunk, still clear and levelheaded, his fingers quick and sure on the snap of her bra, unhooking it.  After, he touches the skin between her shoulder blades with the tips of his fingers.  It feels weirdly intimate, and she shivers, feeling the smile on his face that blooms against her cheek.

She's never realized how small her bed is until they're both on it, until she watches his body swallow up the space, hands braced on either side of the frame like it's nothing.

"I want you," he says, and this she believes, this she knows is true because she can feel him hard against her thigh, through his jeans and whatever he wears beneath.

It's not what she expects: it's hard and rough and quite possibly the best sex Erica has ever had.  He goes down on her first, his mouth and hands on her cunt, and it's not the first time a boy has ever done it to her, it's just the first it's felt like he knows what he's doing, so fucking good instead of awkward.  He responds eagerly when she tangles her fingers in his hair and tugs, needing more pressure, needing another finger inside of her, like he appreciates the pain her hands invoke.  Later, when he's inside of her, he asks her first before he holds her down, gathering her thin wrists in his hand when she nods, out of her mind with want.

Erica doesn't invite him to spend the night and he doesn't stay.  She doesn't feign sleep when he slips out of her bed, and he does her the courtesy of not trying to sneak out either.  Reaching down for his boxers, Cameron tugs them up his legs, pulling on his jeans when he finishes.

In the dim light, she can see a smattering of pale freckles along his shoulders and down his back, and unconsciously reaches out to touch a concentration of them on his lower back.  He moves into the pressure, unsurprised, before he looks over his shoulder at her with a lazy smile.

"I've got a technical row in four hours," he says, sliding his shirt over his head.  It's obscenely wrinkled, mostly from being caught underfoot when they were making their way onto her bed earlier.  "I have to get some sleep."

"Okay," she replies, silently grateful.  The sex was messy and her thighs are still slick with it; she's desperate for a shower.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he says quietly, palming her bare hip before standing up and letting himself out.

In the morning, she finds the tied-off condom on the floor by the wastebasket near her bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Did you ever think about going to different schools?" Erica asks.  She can't imagine being so similar, sharing the same face, the same education, the same past.  Why they'd actively choose to stay together, to follow the same path when they clearly hate being compared to one another, is beyond her.

Tyler laughs like she's just told the funniest joke in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As it turns out, Tyler is nothing like his brother in bed.

(This above all else seems wrong.  Comparing them in bed, like they cease to be without the other in reflection.)

It might be a ruse, a part of the package that Tyler has created, but she doesn't think so, not when his pupils dilate as she forcefully pushes his hands away from the buttons of his shirt, demanding to take over.

Then he says, "What do you want?" and Erica knows for certain.  She doesn't say anything, instead reaching under her skirt to tug down her panties.  He gets the drift, shifting to his knees on the hard wood floor even though his bed is only a few feet away, pulling her thigh over his shoulder, and this is something he is good at too, his mouth as talented as his brother's, though a bit different, a bit softer and less demanding.  And like his brother, Tyler also enjoys a certain amount of pain; he's on his knees for nearly ten minutes, his mouth focused on the space between her legs, but there's no way he can't feel the sharp bite of the unforgiving floor beneath them, and when he finally stands, lifting her onto the bed, she can hear the bones in his knees grind angrily against each other.

Tyler doesn't ask for permission for anything.

The hickey from the party was not an aberration - Tyler spends most of the time inside of her, fucking her, with his mouth on her neck, on her collar bone, on her jaw.  Tucks his head into the space between her neck and shoulder and bites down on the slope of skin there.  She knows she's covered in marks from his mouth and hands.  She also, it seems, enjoys a certain amount of pain.  It explains a lot, she thinks.

Tyler gets her to ride him at the end, rolls over and perches her on top of him without a word.  His hands rest on her ass, kneading the flesh there gently, thumbs coming up to rest on her hipbones as he shows her the pace he likes.  She uses her own hands to pin his chest to the bed, and he goes willingly; it's weird to feel this sort of physical power over someone whose size dwarfs her so significantly.

She finds herself wishing he was a talker in bed like his brother, wishes he would say something to her as his hips start to lose their rhythm, frantically snapping up into her, but the only thing he says when he comes is her name, low and quiet, and it's enough to make her thighs shake, to make her insides curl up as she comes too.  She says nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erica's used to custom, to the tacit rules and boundaries that govern most relationships.  So when she slips out of Tyler's room and finds Cameron sitting spread out on the couch reading the newspaper in the common room, she honestly has absolutely no idea how to proceed.  It's a little after five in the morning and the room is dead silent except for the light rustling of the newspaper and the sound of him chewing.  He's got a half-eaten apple in his right hand, the fingers holding the ripened fruit smudged with ink.

"I'll give you a drive home," he says nonchalantly as she passes behind him.  His back is still turned to her and he makes no attempt to look at her, still scanning the paper in front of him.

Erica reaches for her light coat hanging on one of the small hooks near the door.  "I'm fine, thanks," she says, "I'll walk."

Cameron folds the newspaper back up, tossing it onto the coffee table.  He yawns, finally turning to face her with a look of skepticism.  "You're going to walk five miles?"

She was actually planning to call a cab; she's still sore from sleeping with Tyler and the thought of walking more than a block is daunting.  Her thigh muscles ache like she's just run a marathon.  "I have two perfectly good legs," she says.  At this point, she figures she's just being a bit contrary for the sake of it; she's always a bit punchy in the morning, and waking up in a strange bed this early only makes things worse.

He raises an eyebrow.  "It's still dark outside.  Don't be stupid," he says brusquely, reaching for his keys and standing up.  He stretches, and his sweatshirt - a New England Patriots pullover - lifts until she can see the smooth skin of his stomach.

"Excuse me?"

Cameron smiles easy, leaning against the front door while Erica pulls on her shoes.  "Stop trying to pick a fight and let me drive you home."

Outside her dorm, the car idling in the dim morning, he leans over and kisses her cheek as she reaches for the door handle, his lips brushing against the corner of her mouth.

Later, she'll try to figure out why she did it, why she twisted her head around, why she leaned in to make up the space gained by his slow retreat so she could kiss him, but she won't be able to come with any answer other than she simply wanted to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She's started picking up on the differences between them, the personality ticks that divide them, like the flaws that reveal a forgery from the genuine.  It's only that they take turns being the forgery, letting down their carefully constructed ruse of inseparability.  But she starts to question it after a while, beginning to figure out the deliberate roles they play, the little cracks they purposefully sketch behind the startlingly different personas they've pasted on themselves like cliched halloween masks.

Below the physical similarities, below the conscious ways they draw differences between themselves, there is something fundamental shared between them, the same internal hum from the cogs within that makes them tick.

Cameron his drinks coffee black and Tyler with two creams and two sugars.  Sometimes Tyler will slick his hair back or tug on a bandana, smile with a leer in public that lets Erica know exactly what he's thinking about, entirely transparent.  Cameron never wears hats or bandanas, a creature of immense habit, his hair always perfectly coiffed, and wears the face of seasoned poker player.  But when Cameron gets her alone, he smiles exactly like his brother, and Tyler drinks his coffee black when he thinks no one is watching.

They play their parts with a precision that comes across as genuine to everyone but her.  Cameron as the effortless gentleman, never a toe or tongue out of line, and Tyler as the hotheaded brother, whose only saving grace is the methodical calculation of his brother, who has the ability to handle his brother in a way that baffles Erica.  But they're a two-headed coin, the illusion of difference only an assumption when you accept the reality with which you are presented, when you can't see the duplication hidden by the skin of a palm.  Pushed far and hard enough, Cameron's temper is a forced to be reckoned with, far more incendiary than even his brother's, and Tyler's more tactical in his anger than he lets on, more of a slow, temperate burn than the sharp flame it seems to be.

(She's reminded of that Porcellian party, the anger brewing in Cameron's voice when she first met him, a flawless impersonation of his brother.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, her roommate is the only one that ever gets suspicious.

"So which one are you?" Rosemary asks with a sharp smile, her bag slung over her shoulder as she opens the door for Cameron.  Her eyes are narrowed and her hip is jut to the side.

" _Rosemary_ ," Erica chides.  Rosemary hates Harvard boys.

Cameron's eyebrows rise, his mouth bent into an amused smirk.  The look is all ease, slow and unconcerned.  "Tyler," he says, looking past Rosemary to her, and Erica feels her stomach twist into knots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He laughs.

"What?" Erica asks.  It had felt like a simple enough question, straight forward.

Tyler rolls his eyes a bit.  "Everyone wants to think we had some tragic childhood.  Absent, emotionally-distant tycoon father and socialite mother who handed us off to nannies while she drank and lived out a Tennessee Williams play."

Her _Fundamentals of International Economy_ textbook is resting open in front of her, the pages covered in highlighter with sloppy notes penned into the margins.  They're in a small cafe farther from the BU campus than she normally bothers to travel, a tiny place she likes to visit when the libraries and coffee shops near BU fill up near midterms; she hadn't told him where she had planned to study, but he had shown up less than an hour after she had, plopped himself down in the small booth across from her and unwrapped his striped scarf before plopping his down textbook down beside hers.

"The truth is far more boring," he explains.  "Dad coached our little league team and Mom is allergic to alcohol."  But the way he says it reveals more than she's sure he means to, painting an idyllic picture of a childhood Erica has a sneaking isn't quite as rosy as he makes it out to be.  It reminds her of Tyler and Cameron's relationship with each other, the effortless comradery on the surface masking something distinctly more dysfunctional below.

She tries to read his writing upside down, but it's only slightly better than chickenscratch so she gives up.  The textbook is thicker than hers, something about ethics and business, two things she's almost always considered to be mutually exclusive.

"Why is it so comforting for people to believe that the rich have no souls?" he asks seriously.

She doesn't say that it's not about being rich or poor, only that the dependence they have on one another is something that seems odd, that seems like the product of emotional neglect, of needing each other because they had nothing else, or whatever other cliche she's gleaned from one too many psych courses.

"It's just easier to believe that people can't have everything," she answers, dragging the pen stuck through her messy bun out to write an acronym for the principles of stabilization policy into the little bit of space left in the margins of the page.

Tyler smiles with Cameron's poker face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Do you do this often?" she asks.  She readjusts the scarf around her neck as it slips away.  The winter weather is starting to blow in along the Eastern seaboard.  Everything is colder this close to the coast.

"Do what?"

"This."

"What's _This_?"

She shakes her head, irritation rising into the tips of her fingers.  "Stop it."

"No," Cameron says, finally dropping the act.  His eyes are dark and his mouth is drawn in a serious line, and he's not lying.  He's not lying.  "No, we don't."

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only other time Tyler talks about his father is the night he shows up at her door drunk.  Rosemary's in New York City for the weekend, something Erica's infinitely grateful for when Tyler knocks at her door at a little before four in the morning, reeking of booze and pretzel salt and secondhand smoke.  He leans into the doorway when she opens it, his hands gripping the little ledge above her door, using it to hold himself up.

Tyler is loud and handsy and nearly falls over twice as she tries to wrangle him inside her suite, brushing off his overt attempts to slide his hands into the back of her pajama pants.  He tries to kiss her over the threshold of her door, his hands planted on either side of her face, and Erica flinches away, his mouth landing under her left eye instead.  She doesn't miss the look of hurt that settles into his features, slowly melting into something that registers to her as sober unhappiness.

"Come on," she says, realizing she can't make him leave in this state; even if he didn't drive, there's no way he's together enough to catch a cab without breaking his head open on a curb or passing out between the street and his building.

She reaches for the key chain hanging out of his pocket as he chatters mindlessly, his words slurring slightly.  He talks about some man Erica thinks might be a lawyer working for his father before turning on his father. "I crashed his car, and Cameron took the blame."  His keys get tossed on the coffee table near the small couch.  He laughs, but it's a joyless sound, something far darker than humour.

"What?" Erica asks, entirely confused.  It feels like she's been dropped into the middle of a conversation without a compass.  She knows that he's not really talking to her at all.

"He didn't even blink."  The jacket comes off next, dropped over a chair as she guides him backwards to her room.  Tyler's hands are freezing, and they're wrapped around her ribs, under her shirt, siphoning off her warmth, chilling her bones.  She shivers, and he looks down at her, his face just as cold.  "He knew his good boy didn't crash the jag into the Feldman's pond."

Eventually she manages to get him to her bed, though he crashes into her night table first, knocking the lamp over.  The base of it cracks, falling apart, and she sighs angrily; it had been a gift from her aunt in Kentucky back in her freshman year.  The headboard rattles against the wall when his heavy frame falls onto the bed, and it reminds her of the night she spent with Cameron in it, the way the headboard had beat against the wall like a drum.

Tyler's dirty boots are still on his feet, tracking dirt against the small throw carpet next to her bed, so she leans over, unlacing them before roughly jerking them off.  He's spread out sideways on her bed, knees bent over the side, arm thrown over his face, blocking out the dim light from the common room.

"He loves him more," Tyler says morosely.  He's talking to himself again, mumbling a litany of half-considered words after, already mostly asleep, his eyelids drooped closed.

She lets him sleep it off in her bed, spending the night in Rosemary's instead.

When she wakes up in the morning, he's already gone.  Her bed is made and there's a hundred dollar bill on the table under Rosemary's ipod, _for the lamp_ scribbled hastily across a yellow post-it stuck to it.

(They never talk about it.  She returns the hundred dollar bill, though.

"I don't want your money," she says, the folded bill between her index and middle finger.  Tyler looks at her as though he's a wounded animal backed into a corner, and it strikes her that this is the first time she's ever really seen him look fearful, like the greatest punishment she could dole out would be to make him talk about what happened.  What he said.

"And if you ever drive drunk again, I'll set your fucking car on fire," she adds angrily.

When he won't take the money, she leaves next to his keys on the small endtable near his couch.

A week later, there's a box waiting on her table instead, a small tiffany lamp inside from a stylish little boutique on Alfred street.  She checks: they don't take returns.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cameron presses two fingers into her.  She hisses in response, the intrusion unexpected; she's a little wet from the heavy petting earlier, but his fingers are dry and thick, and she shifts, trying to find an angle that feels more comfortable.  It's made more difficult by the fact that he didn't pull her panties off, just nudged them to the side so they pressed against his wrist instead, limiting the motion of his hand.

She can barely see him in the dark, just the outline of his body against the light coming in through the window.  Cameron hadn't turned on a single light when they'd stumbled into the apartment.

"We're suing him, you know," he says, his mouth over her bra.  At her shoulder.  Over her mouth.  "Mark.  We're suing him."

The truth is that she hasn't thought about Mark in months, not even to recount the ways in which she considers his existence to be a blight on humanity.  She's not particularly angry anymore, like it's gone dormant inside of her, slipped away when she wasn't paying attention.  But she knows their battle with him is still brewing, that there have been calls between them and lawyers, with their father and their business partner.

Either way, she's not sure why he's bringing it up now.  Cameron likes to talk during sex, likes it noisy and messy, but this is something that she decidedly doesn't like.

"No, I didn't know," she answers, catching his hand, his fingers still hooked inside of her.  She doesn't know what look is on her face, but this close, her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she can see the confusion in his eyes, like he had expected his words to please her.  In reality, she couldn't care less about him anymore, existing only as a cautionary tale.  (But the thought will nag at her later, the memory of how it started, the thought that this might still be about Mark for them.)

His fingers slide out of her, wet streaks left behind as he touches her thigh.  "Erica."

She sighs, leaning forward just enough to bite his bottom lip.  She uses her teeth meanly and he sucks in a sharp breath.  "Cameron," she mocks, using the sarcastic tone to fill the rest in unsaid.  _Do you really want to talk about this right now?_

She's on her hands and knees before she can blink, caught in the loose sheets.  They smell like him, the woody scent of his cologne, and he presses her into them.

"I want to hear you," Cameron whispers against the small of her back, his still-wet fingers hooking into her panties and dragging them down over her ass.

It's only when she wakes up halfway through the night that she notices Tyler's jacket hanging off the closet door, the _A Clockwork Orange_ poster on the wall over the desk, and realizes they are not in Cameron's room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They go to her photography exhibit.

She doesn't tell them about it, which is why she isn't particularly surprised when they show up.  This is something she has grown accustomed to.

It's an exhibition for the course she's taking through the Center for Digital Imaging Arts, a small cocktail party held each semester to feature students' work.  A section of the building is blocked off for each medium: photography, mixed mediums, film, digital, and installations.  The photography exhibit consumes the entire first floor and parts of the large installation room on the second floor.

They arrive separately: Cameron first, early in the evening when the crowds begin to trickle in, his hands tucked into his pockets as he quickly mills around, taking in the different shots hung in the negative space.  He considers each shot before he moves on, methodically sifting through the room.  He's quiet and surprisingly unassuming, and disappears without Erica noticing.

Tyler second.  He comes in a half-hour before the exhibition closes; he doesn't take off his jacket and doesn't stop to look at any of the shots other than hers.  The room is loud and hot, filled with chatter and overly boisterous alcohol-fueled laughter, but he looks intensely focused, like he hardly notices the large flocks of people surrounding him.  A few people try to speak to him, a casual word over their shoulder as they both stare at the print of the screaming barn swallows or the high-speed shot of the burnt light bulb shattering.  One, a girl from her class, puts her hand on his upper arm as she says something to him, the sound of her words swallowed by the noise around them; Erica's too far away to know what she's saying to him, but she recognizes the smile he flashes at the girl.  It's strained, the kind of smile that reflects his deep discomfort and irritation, but to most, it looks like nothing but miles of teeth, perfect and white.

(It's always Tyler, she realizes, that people want to talk to, want to touch.  People orbit him effortlessly, drawn in by his energy.  Cameron's gravity is reversed.  But those who are eventually drawn in cannot escape.)

Both leave without a word, even though she knows the both of them spot her in the crowd.

By the end of the evening, all five of her prints on display have little red dots on their information cards, indicating a sale.  Three are anonymous purchases.

A week later, she finds one of her prints hidden in Tyler's closet while he's in the bathroom and she's searching for a shirt, her own torn at neck, half ripped apart from Tyler's hands.  It's the shot she had taken of Cameron from behind one day after practice, his shoulders framed in an elegant archway near one of the bridges over the Charles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"One of them dropped it off," Rosemary says.  "I think it might have been tweedledee."  Rosemary's mother is waiting for her in the car downstairs, ready to drive back to Hartford.  Erica's got a final on the last official day of the exam period, and the rest of the house save for one or two students has already headed home for the holidays.  "Love you, Albright," she says, pulling her into a one-armed hug, the other still hanging on to the handle of her luggage.  She smiles.  "Don't make dumb choices."

After Rosemary shuts the door, Erica wanders over to the table, nudging the wrapped box.  She'd had a sneaking suspicion they were going to drop by before they left for the airport, which is part of the reason she spent the day at the Gotlieb, browsing through the archives on ratification conventions.  It had been quiet and peaceful, and she had spent the better part of the afternoon rereading the same pages over and over again, her mind caught in a loop completely unrelated to anything other than Tyler's mouth and Cameron hands, the framed photo Tyler had hidden in his closet and the way Tyler's sheets had smelled of Cameron.

The effortless way Cameron had given the name of his brother as his own.

When she unwraps the bow, artlessly ripping at the paper, she finds a velvet box within a box _._

Inside is a diamond solitaire on a platinum chain.  There's no note with it, but there's a small cursive _C & T _carved into the platinum base holding the round, brilliant diamond.  She closes the case with a harsh snap, tossing it carefully on top of her dresser.  Erica can't explain the sick feeling that rolls over her.

Later, when its mere presence starts to make her skin itch, she shoves it into her sock drawer, piles unmatched socks and panties over it until she can no longer see the dark navy velvet case.

She makes the appointment three days later for Thursday afternoon, after her last exam.  (The final for _Psychology of Personality._ She tries not to find it ironic.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erica goes home to Albany for Christmas.  None of her family is religious, her father's an only child, and half of her mother's siblings still live in San Francisco, so the holidays are a small affair.

Her parents pick her up from the airport.  Her father waits in the car in the pick up zone, fighting with taxis that buck for the best spots along the arrivals line.  She can hear the angry sound of horns from the baggage area.

Her mother hugs Erica frantically first, then calms enough to let go to touch her cheeks.  The sharp line of hair that only reaches to Erica's shoulders is next; her mother tucks it behind Erica's ear.  "Oh my goodness," her mother says with a smile.  "It's lovely, Erica.  I almost didn't recognize you."

Erica smiles nervously, reaching for her bag and following her mother out of the terminal.

Erica's cousin Anne comes over on Boxing Day with her new baby, a little boy large green eyes and a terrible set of lungs.  "He won't stop putting things into his mouth!" Anne complains lightheartedly while she sips on a glass of ginger ale.  "Roger left his keys on the table next to his high chair last week and I came back to Benny with everything but the Mercedes keychain down his throat."  Her husband rolls his eyes, taking a large swig of his beer.

"What about you?" Anne says with a wink, turning on Erica when they finally get some privacy, Anne's husband chattering with Erica's father about snowblowers while her mother checks on the ham.  "A special boy with an oral fixation in your life?"

The answer is automatic.  It scares her how quickly it comes, how easily she lies.  And how it's as much the truth as it is a lie.

"No," Erica says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_C. Winklevoss_ flashes over her call display on New Year's Eve, but she doesn't pick up.

Ten minutes later, _T. Winklevoss_ calls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She does it the way she knows she shouldn't, the coward's way out.  She calls when she knows they'll be training, when she knows Cameron's cell phone will be in his locker with his watch and wallet, while he's out on the Charles with his brother.  She leaves a voicemail.

Just _space_ , she tells him.  Just for a little while.  Just until she figures a few things out.  Her words sound halfhearted, even to herself, but she steels her will.  She's stubborn, if anything.

Erica knows that Cameron will respect her request enough to stay away, and Tyler follows the will of his brother, that his brother's rigid self-restraint will compensate for Tyler's impetuousness.   That it's what they do, how they cope, the strengths of one acting as ballast against the weakness of the other.

And they do.  Cameron doesn't wait for her outside of her building and Tyler stays away from her normal haunts.  They don't show up at her door drunk or come uninvited to the small party that The Daily Free Press puts on in the newsroom.  She goes to class, does her laundry, hops out to a bar with Rosemary and some of her friends from the philosophy program.

Two weeks later, there's a voicemail waiting for when she checks her phone after class.  _Missed Call - T. Winklevoss_.

Erica deletes it without listening to it.

(That's a lie.  She listens to it, Tyler's voice tinny in her ear - _what did we do?_ \- and knows immediately that he called without telling Cameron.

Their secrets are where they start to crumble.  And she right along with them.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sound of water on land is an odd one, the flat slap of the oars against the waves incongruous with the wood and concrete of the room.  The water in the tank looks disgusting and the smell of chlorine saturates everything in the cavernous space.  It's late and they're alone in the small boathouse.

Cameron sees her first.  When he stops rowing, Tyler does too, the mechanics of their bodies synchronized.

The waves keep slapping against the side of the tank even after they stop, the water's violence thick in the air.

"Hey," Cameron says, a little out of breath, resting his arms on his knees after he bends them up toward his chest, and she feels something low inside her gut clench, warmth spreading through her like a drug.

(She'll go back to their apartment with them.  Tyler will drive, Erica will ride shotgun, and Cameron will sit in the tiny backseat, his legs cramped into the space.  Cameron will lean forward and touch the end of her hair, rubbing it between his fingers as if to test the feel of it.  "I like it," he'll say with a smile, and Tyler will turn to look at them at a red light and say nothing, but she'll see the ghost of smile in the corners of his mouth.

Cameron will go down on Erica on the couch while Tyler is in the shower, his hands spreading her legs obscenely.  He'll stop only to tell her that he wants to see her come, and she will, loudly, because she likes it that way, too.  He'll whisper something in her ear after, but she won't hear it, only the low chuckle that follows when he slips his fingers back inside of her.

She will sleep in Tyler's bed.  In one of his shirts that reaches mid-thigh on her.  She'll look in his closet while he's brushing his teeth and find that her photo is gone, just lines of shoes and hung shirts.

Cameron won't ask her, but Tyler will.  "Why-" he'll start to say, and she'll wonder if he's thinking about that voicemail he left her, the things he said that she knows he didn't tell Cameron, like his drunken confession.  Tyler will only tell the truth.

She'll think about kissing Cameron in the car all those months ago, how she kissed him because she wanted to, even though she had still been sore from Tyler, that she had known then what she knows now, that while she wants it, it's also wrong.  Only she'll decide she doesn't really care.  "Because I wanted to," she'll say because she has no better answer, because that's the only answer she needs, and Tyler will smile like himself and no one else.

She will never wear the necklace they bought her.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first thing Erica does when she signs up for facebook is set her profile photo to a shot of her with Cameron's arm draped over her shoulders casually, Tyler's fingers at her hips, HARVARD CREW printed across their chests in big block letters.

 


End file.
